Grand Master's Palace, Valletta

Where it sits. The palace fills an entire city block in the centre of Valletta, bounded by Republic Street on one side, Merchants Street on the other, and Old Theatre and Archbishop Streets at the ends. Its long Republic Street front faces St George's Square, the city's main civic space, which was repaved as a flat open piazza with dancing fountains in 2009. Like the Co-Cathedral, the building is restrained on the outside: a plain limestone elevation, two great doorways with columned surrounds, and a run of closed timber balconies along the first floor that were added under Grand Master Pinto in the eighteenth century and have become one of the most photographed details in the city.

How it grew. Girolamo Cassar began the building around 1571 for Grand Master Pierre de Monte, apparently by absorbing an existing house belonging to the Grand Master's nephew. Successive Grand Masters extended it in every direction until it occupied the whole insula. That accretion explains the plan: rather than a single formal courtyard, there are two. Neptune's Courtyard takes its name from a large bronze figure of the sea god, attributed to Giambologna or a sculptor close to him, which is thought to have stood originally at the Valletta fish market before being moved here. Prince Alfred's Courtyard, named for Queen Victoria's son after an 1858 visit, carries an eighteenth-century clock tower whose bronze figures swing hammers to strike the hours and quarters, a mechanism that still runs.

The state rooms. The upper floor holds the ceremonial sequence the Order used to govern its territories. The Supreme Council Hall, where the Order's council met, is wrapped by a painted frieze of twelve scenes of the Great Siege of 1565, executed by Matteo Perez d'Aleccio between 1576 and 1581 while men who had fought in it were still alive to complain about the details. The adjoining Council Chamber is hung with the Gobelins tapestry set known as Les Tentures des Indes, presented by Grand Master Ramon Perellos in 1710 and woven after paintings of Brazil, Africa and the Caribbean by Albert Eckhout and Frans Post, so the walls of a room in a Mediterranean fortress city are covered in tapirs, armadillos, pineapples and Tupi warriors. Beyond them run the Ambassadors' Room in red damask, the State Dining Room hung with portraits of British monarchs, and the Hall of St Michael and St George, the former throne room, whose minstrels' gallery is traditionally said to have been cut from the stern of the Order's great carrack Sant'Anna. The corridors linking them are lined with the painted arms of every Grand Master from Villiers de L'Isle-Adam onward, a heraldic sequence that functions as the Order's institutional memory, and with suits of armour standing between the doors. Ceilings throughout are timber, coffered and painted, and the floors are patterned marble laid in the eighteenth century.

The Armoury. In 1975 the Order's surviving armoury was moved into the former palace stables on the ground floor, and it is arguably the best reason to buy a ticket. The Order kept a central magazine of arms and armour for its own troops, and several thousand pieces survive, including full field harnesses, Ottoman weapons captured in 1565 and later, wheel-lock firearms, and the gilt and etched half-armour made for Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt around 1600. It is one of the very few armouries in Europe still held where it was originally stored rather than assembled by later collectors.

Four centuries of government. The building has never stopped being the seat of power on the island, which is unusual and slightly disorientating. It housed the Grand Masters until Napoleon expelled the Order in 1798, the French briefly, then the British Governor from 1800 until independence in 1964. The Maltese House of Representatives sat here until 2015, when Parliament moved to Renzo Piano's new building at the city gate. It is now the Office of the President of Malta, and parts of it are closed at short notice when the President is receiving. A major restoration ran from 2018 and reopened the state rooms and armoury in stages.

Getting there and timing. The visitor entrance is off Palace Square on Republic Street, ten minutes' walk from City Gate and two minutes from the Co-Cathedral, so most people pair the two in one morning. Heritage Malta runs it and a combined multi-site ticket usually works out cheaper if you also intend to see Fort St Elmo or the archaeology museum. Go early on a weekday: the state rooms are narrow and a single tour group fills the Tapestry Chamber completely. Check opening status the day before, because state functions close the upper floor entirely and there is no warning at the door.